Corporate New Year’s Resolutions For 2014

It’s that time of year again, for New Year’s Resolutions. While individuals resolve to eat healthier and stay in touch more with family and friends, organizations can also take this time to establish new company-wide initiatives that not only affect the bottom line but can also motivate and inspire their teams. Here are a few resolutions companies can drive for 2014:

Reinforce Green Behavior
This can be accomplished is numerous ways such as reducing travel, replacing paper with digital documents or encouraging carpooling among coworkers. It helps to set specific goals such as replacing 10% of business travel with video conferencing or visual collaboration sessions. Additionally, companies can introduce week or month long initiatives to promote recycling, carpooling or reducing the use of paper. For example, a company can declare March carpool month and encourage colleagues who live close to each other to carpool twice a week during the month.

Increase Collaboration Across Teams
Many organizations and teams suffer from information silos; people concentrate on their own tasks instead of the team’s overarching goals or the roles of their colleagues. Companies can help improve collaboration by implementing a company newsletter or deploying unified communications technologies. Newsletters help improve company-wide communication while UC technologies give colleagues the opportunity to connect in both formal (video and web conferences) and informal (IM and video chat) ways. Increased communication and collaboration can help drive productivity through faster decision making and more efficient processes.

Implement Corporate Wellness Programs
The benefits of exercise are enormous and include increased energy, improved moods, reduced stress levels and better sleep. This can translate into happier and more productive employees which can significantly impact a company’s bottom line. Companies can implement a corporate wellness program by providing employees an activity tracker like Fitbit then encourage colleagues to be more active with daily goals and weekly challenges. “Combining collaborative and competitive elements helped motivate employees to walk more and encourage each other. Our staff has been happier and more productive [in the office]” said Maggie Utgoff from Hack Reactor, an organization that recently implemented a similar program.

These are just a few initiatives companies can resolve implement in 2014 to help motivate and inspire their teams. As with any resolution though, have a firm plan in place so resolutions don’t fall by the wayside come February!